Online Supplement to Museum Anthropology, the Journal of the Council for Museum Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association

Tuesday, October 03, 2017

Yayoi Kusama, Queen of Polka Dots, Opens Museum in Tokyo

Yayoi Kusama, The New York TimesSeptember 26, 2017

"Even the restrooms are covered in polka dots.

Yayoi Kusama, the celebrated Japanese artist whose compulsively repetitive images have drawn huge crowds and critical acclaim around the world, is opening a museum in Tokyo that could only be hers. The unmistakable touches include large red polka dots and mirrors in the elevators and a bulbous mosaic pumpkin sculpture on the top floor.

“Until now, I was the one who went overseas,” Ms. Kusama, 88, said, sitting in a wheelchair in front of her painting “I Who Have Arrived In The Universe” at a media preview of the Yayoi Kusama Museum on Tuesday. “But I now recognize that there are more people coming to Japan to come to see my work,” she said, reading from a statement in a binder covered in — what else? — red polka dots. “And that is why I decided to establish a place for them to see my work.”

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Museum Anthropology Editors

Lea McChesney

Curator of Ethnology, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico